Praedicator

Verba

Friday, August 26, 2016 - Friday in the 21th Week in Ordinary Time

[1 Cor 1:17-25 and Matt 25:1-13]

Where is the wise one? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish? [1 Cor.]

One could easily get the impression from St. Paul's opening lines in First Corinthians that he is anti-science and anti-intellectual. But that is hardly the case. He was a very well-educated Jew and quite able to hold his own in a debate, as we know from his letters and Acts of the Apostles. In his Letter to the Romans, he points out that God can be known from creation, which certainly invites us to know that creation better! Recent discoveries in genetics show the incredible design of the human person on a physical level, and the human mind has been and continues to be an ocean that will defy the deepest explorers!

What St. Paul is pointing to is that not all knowledge is of an empirical measurable kind. There is what we call revelation. God's greatest revelation is not genetic or astrophysical but a person, Jesus Christ. Knowledge of Jesus Christ comes first through faith and then reflection on what that faith reveals to us through centuries of experience. The "signs" and "wisdom" Paul speaks to are the classic demands for proof that cannot yield the kind of knowledge that comes from faith. Faith and reason are not enemies. They work in different ways. A brief reading of St. Thomas Aquinas can show that. In our own time, one may read Pope St. John Paul's FIDES ET RATIO for a majestic reflection on this. St. Paul makes us sit up and think carefully about the power of our faith. "For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. AMEN